Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8883240" data-attributes="member: 2629">If you're interested in this topic there are a few good Youtube videos on it out there if you hunt for them.My views on the topic:There are two relevant content groupings to worry about: A.) What IP WotC/Hasbro would be able to protect in court, and B.) What they'd sue over even if they were not so sure they could win because the nuisance of suing you might get them what they want.In terms of what they could protect in court: This is unknown.  Them granting licenses to others has meant that the IP covered by the grant hasn't been under contention.  Without contention, you won't know the boundaries.  There are some real solid limitations on what can be protected with IP laws, and what can't - and how they work in a given environment is something that will be worked out over time once there is contention.  In terms of what they might attempt to protect that they might not be able to successfully protect in court: There is a lot of nuisance IP law suits out there, but the bang has to be worth the buck.  For WotC to actually take you to court and sue you the combination of the chance and benefit of winning has to overcome the chance and detriment of losing - and both have to be balanced against the status quo of doing nothing more than a cease and desist.  Some of the biggest factors in determing what would make it worthwhile in their eyes are going to depend upon their own internal plans for the future.  To that extent, trying to predict what they might go after is a fools errand.In the end, they'll want people to give them their cut, but will not want to go to court over it.  To that end, I think the compromise they'll find is that the OGL will have a revenue cap.  If you exceed the cap, you pay.  However, if you pay, you get perks including accress to additional IP from WotC to use, cross promotion by Wotc, access to selling your product within the official WotC VTT, etc...  The big risk for WotC is that there are enough people out there with a heavy stake in having an accessible RPG that they can use as a base to sell their products against.  Someone will generate the next Pathfinder that cuts D&D off at the knees by giving a similar quality of game play with greater freedom to use by 3P.  I can't imagine they'd take that risk given their current position.</blockquote>

Verification